"Hist!" said my lover, making a sign to the other to do nothing, "the first blood is mine," and, grasping his sword, he swung it over his head and, a moment later, the hand and forearm were lying at our feet. But no shriek from outside the window was heard, only, in the place of the bleeding stump that had been there, there came four large fingers of another hand that endeavoured to wrench away the wood as the other had done; fingers that met the same fate. Then for a moment there was silence outside--silence that was broken by renewed hammering from the tomahawks on all parts of the shutters. But now there came a fearful howl from beyond the porch which was only explained to us by hearing the cry of Buck upstairs. "Good! Good! Give 'em another bath. 'Twill do 'em good. Their dirty skins h'aint been washed for a long while. Bring more hot water along quick, I say." Unfortunately for us, those who were endeavouring to force their entry into the room where we stood, were sheltered from the boiling water by the roof of the porch (a solid stone one which served also as a balcony to the rooms above) as also were those attacking the main front entrance. At the back of the house, however, on which a party of Indians were engaged in endeavouring to also force their way in, there was no porch, nor was there any to the sides of the building; and it was from these that we had heard the screams as the contents of Buck's great barrels had reached them. It took, however, but little time for the water to become exhausted, and then we knew that the conflict must resolve itself into a hand-to-hand one. We might keep the savages at bay for some time, it was true, so long as they could enter the house by one door only, but how long, we had to ask ourselves, could such as that be the case? In a short time one of the windows of the saloon must go, or one of the great doors, of which there were two, or one of the side doors; and then the Indians would pour through the opening thus made and the massacre begin. Even with those men under O'Rourke and Buck we were not twenty-five strong, the cowardly negroes who were left being, as I have said, all huddled together in the vaults and cellars below, where they had locked themselves in--so that, since there must be two or three hundred Indians outside at least, the resistance could not continue long. Alas! as it was, our front window giving on to the porch already showed signs of yielding to the attack from without, though now there was a fresh barricade offered to the incoming foe by a heap of their own slain who lay outside and also partly within the room. Already, my lord had shot several on the outside, taking deadly aim as their hideous faces appeared at the orifice, but the breach had widened so that two or three had crawled into the room to be, however, despatched at once by him or Mr. Kinchella.